MedAscend co-founder Ahmed Sharaf tells Sarah Cartledge how his lived medical student experience shaped the business
Ahmed Sharaf did not arrive at medical school expecting to become a technology founder. Like many students, he imagined a relatively settled route from university into clinical practice. However, the preparation for his first objective structured clinical examination, or OSCE, exposed a problem that would change that direction.
Medical students are expected to learn how to take a history and explain treatment which can often involve difficult conversations. Yet opportunities to practise with simulated patients can be limited by the availability of teaching staff and actors. “There weren’t enough opportunities to practise communication and clinical reasoning skills, getting in front of patients in a safe space and in a repeatable manner to increase confidence before actually meeting a patient,” Ahmed says.
Conversations with educators showed that the difficulty extended far beyond their own cohort. Simulation sessions were expensive to run, while growing student numbers were placing further pressure on limited capacity. At the same time, generative AI was becoming more capable and more widely accepted within education. Ahmed and co-founder Hana Woods began to investigate whether it could allow institutions to offer repeated practice without attempting to replace faculty-led teaching.
A learner’s perspective
The result was MedAscend, an AI clinical simulation platform through which students can hold realistic voice or video conversations with virtual patients and colleagues. The system provides transcript-based feedback and data that can help the faculty see how learners are progressing.
Ahmed and Hana built the platform alongside the consultants, educators, students and faculty who shape how healthcare is taught and assessed today. MedAscend supplies the infrastructure but does not decide what should be taught or what good performance looks like. Its clinical advisory network includes consultants and specialists from the UK, Ireland and the Middle East who help to keep cases grounded in practice.
Ahmed believes the founders’ experience as medical students has helped them identify the requirements for learners and educators. ”There are a lot of tech companies trying to create similar solutions, but nobody’s got it quite right – I feel having the learner’s eye and the actual lived experience is really important,” he says.
As neither Ahmed nor Hana came from a technical background, their task was to define the product clearly and recruit people who could build it. Support from the University of Dundee’s Centre for Entrepreneurship helped them validate the idea and make connections within the local business community.
Growth without compromise
MedAscend has so far developed without venture capital or angel investment. Ahmed says the company has secured more than £300,000 in support through grants, programmes and competitions, alongside income from its first contracts. Its successes include three Scottish EDGE awards, recognition through Converge and the Royal Bank of Scotland accelerator programme, as well as UK Research and Innovation support.
“We haven’t taken any equity investment to date,” he says. “The early contracts have helped give us runway to help develop the platform properly before we need to access external investment.”
The company entered the market at an education conference in Bournemouth in November 2025 and became revenue-generating the following month. The initial plan was to concentrate on the UK, but interest at conferences quickly revealed a wider opportunity. MedAscend now has partnerships designed to support expansion into Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.
One of its first large deployments was an eight-week open-access pilot at the University of Dundee School of Medicine in 2025. According to figures published by MedAscend, 300 students completed 2,240 simulated consultations. The company reported an average 20 per cent improvement across consultations and a rise in students’ self-reported OSCE confidence from 5.36 to 8.25 out of ten. The results are encouraging, although broader independent evaluation will be important as the platform reaches more institutions.
In July 2026 MedAscend was featured on BBC Tech Now when a television crew visited the University of Dundee to interview the founders and speak to lecturer Dr Kevin Stirling about the role of technology in clinical education. Broadcast on the BBC News Channel, the report showed MedAscend in use and examined how AI simulation could give students more opportunities to practise clinical conversations before meeting patients.
MedAscend is also designed for use beyond undergraduate medical education. The company says it can support nursing and pharmacy training, with potential applications across the health sector. Scenarios can range from taking clinical histories to conducting handovers and speaking with relatives. Its multilingual capability creates scope for locally relevant patients and consultations rather than simply exporting English-language content.
International reach
In the Middle East and Africa, MedAscend has formed a distribution partnership with Dubai-based healthcare simulation specialist SimuLead. The company has also partnered with the Arab American University of Palestine to provide undergraduate medical students with simulated encounters in Arabic and English. Ahmed is keen to retain the ability to pursue direct institutional opportunities where appropriate, particularly as interest grows in Saudi Arabia and the wider Gulf.
For the founders, rapid commercial progress is running alongside the final stage of medical school. They both qualify as doctors next year but are increasingly drawn towards building the company full time. “We definitely enjoy this business world a lot more,” Ahmed says. “It is still very much medical and helping future clinicians, but in a different way.”
Have some thoughts on the topic? Share them with the community here